The current House of Representatives inquiry into the legalisation of personal vaporisers should be welcomed and not criticised, as tedious, tendentious public health fascist Simon Chapman whinged in the Sydney Morning Herald yet again last week. This inquiry is a response to an international consensus of independent public health bodies that vaping is not only a substantially safer alternative to smoking cigarettes, but that tobacco smokers should be advised to switch to vaping as an effective cessation strategy.

Editor’s Note: Risk Based regulation received a boost when the FDA extended the compliance date for the “deeming ” rule. Nonetheless the real question is what occurs after the three month extension expires? In arriving at its decision FDA will be guided by a number of considerations including Executive Orders issued by the Trump Administration which are overseen by OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA).

Do you know how astonishing that is? A few years ago, the medical journal The Lancet launched a campaign for “a tobacco-free world by 2040.” Its definition of “tobacco-free” was a smoking rate of less than 5 percent. Sweden is basically there.

Why have Swedes stopped smoking? Because Sweden has adopted a “harm reduction” strategy: It has largely replaced deadly cigarettes with a product that supplies users with both nicotine and tobacco yet doesn’t increase the odds of dying the way smoking does. That product is called snus (it rhymes with goose).

Cigar Aficionado, the lifestyle magazine known for putting stogie-sporting celebrities on its cover, has a message for the new Food and Drug Administration Commissioner: Hands off our sticks.

In a letter to FDA head Scott Gottlieb, the magazine’s editor and publisher called on the administration to exempt “handmade” cigars from the tighter tobacco regulations finalized by the Obama administration in May 2016.